


my dreams they aren't as empty

by djemso



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Brainwashing, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Friendship, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but ideas, it was meant to be a one shot, some dehumanization, there may be more to this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1498543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/djemso/pseuds/djemso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Forgetting yourself is easy. Forgetting the people you love is not.</i> A look into the mind of the Winter Soldier through out the film.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my dreams they aren't as empty

**Author's Note:**

> I will be honest here: I'm a complete newb. I've seen the film twice, read the book and have a lot of feels that I wanted to express, so this is me giving that a shot. There are a million good works on this, but this is simply my take on it and I hope I haven't got them horribly wrong. I have the strangest desire to continue it, but given that this all poured out in a few hours, I figured one step at a time. It's actually been so long since I wrote fic that I don't have a beta, so all mistakes are my own and blame it being 2am in the morning when this refused to let me sleep.

Forgetting yourself is easy.

Try and describe yourself. What do you look like? What is your personality like? What can be said for your character? Are you a good person, and why? What makes you laugh? Are you weak? Do people like you? These are not easy questions. There are no straight answers.

You do not know what you look like. When you peer at your reflection in already fading memories, it’s slicking your hair in a specific style. It’s checking for an even shave. It’s moving your jaw to check some bozo hasn’t knocked it funny cause it’s still numb. It’s making sure your shirt doesn’t look rumpled or for stains in the fabric. It’s checking your back is dry or that a cut has healed. Practicing the rakish grin till it looks natural, charming and confident till it becomes second nature, and you don’t need to look anymore. You look at the mirror to check parts of the whole, aspects of yourself but you do not stop and simply observe what you look like. What color your eyes are, the shape of your jawline, the silhouette of your figure are not things you ever remember checking on and making sure they were still the same as you thought.

Mostly, you take it on faith that what people tell you about how you look is truthful. You’re young, you’re handsome, you have dark hair, you’re tall for your age, you look strong, you dress impeccably, you look like _trouble_ with a million dollar grin of a con artist. Surprisingly, you don’t mind that at all. It’s a compliment and you enjoy flashing the same smile, a laugh before you get chased off with affection to get back to work.

You stop caring about dressing impeccably. It gets harder to pull off the same grin. People tell you other things, characteristics about you since you began to withdraw. You’re a whip shot (when killing first became easy), you’re brave (you’re terrified), you’re a commando (you’re an idiot for becoming one), you’re strong (that’s a laugh), you’re confident (you’re arrogant), you’re a good friend (but he doesn’t really need you anymore, does he?) and you’re serving your country (you’re going to die out here and you won’t be the only one) and these thoughts are insidious, angry and ingrained. They pop up when you don’t expect them, when you can’t remember what a commando is (you’re a soldier) and you don’t know which country you’re supposed to be serving.

No one tells you that it’s easy to forget yourself, because you don’t know yourself. You don’t like what war has taught you about yourself. You don’t know what you look like, because you haven’t seen yourself in a long time. You don’t know what you’re like because you’ve been changing and you don’t know if it’s all in your head, because no one is looking at you any differently or telling you any differently, except when they catch the smile slip. You can play it off. You’re an excellent liar (you think) and there’s not enough decent alcohol, no matter what Di-- Du-- Da--

You've lost it.

You write off another fragment as useless, gone to nothing but an initial and soon it won’t even be that.

 

* * *

 

At first, you had nothing at all. You were dimly aware of your surroundings, your name, your rank and what you were supposed to be, but whenever anything came back, it would be gone in flashes of pain almost as quickly. Dismissed as a useless fragment, slotted into before and knowing it would be gone and you would clarity again soon.

You lose your name, your humanity and for the most part, your voice. Everything inside is tactics, angles, language and maintenance. A fragment creeps in now and then and you sort and wait for it to go next time. Sometimes it lingers. The french language is important. You can’t mispronounce it, but do, just once, and can hear the irritated reaction of _something_ from your mind. It sparks a sound -- laughter, the recesses provides. It’s an odd feeling, like dying but pleasant. You tell your handlers about it and are informed it’s an indication that you need to be wiped clean again, in case in compromises the mission. Nothing can do that.

Forgetting yourself is easy, because you don’t know who you are. You know a number and a name for a while, but it slips away and you can’t catch it again.

Forgetting the people you love is not easy, and Steve hangs on the longest. Even when you’re sure your name is something else, you remember how he says it. Your nick name. _Your name_ , committed to memory in your best friends voice. You’re not a good person, but you can’t be too bad either because he still looks at you with a mix of hero worship and genuine care and even when you’re trying to remember why the hell there’s numbers in your head and what it was so important to remember numbers for, you can still remember snatches of being handed drinks, of smiles, of wheezing through winter and comments about tights. Tights, as an garment, are typically feminine and you’re not sure why that’s part of your memories of him.

In your memories, Steve looks at you like you’re the hero of the story and you kind of want to be that for him. You want to be whoever the hell he sees when he looks at you.

You don’t know exactly when you forgot him, a small hand on your shoulder, that ridiculously hopeful look that somehow managed to give you some kind of faith in humanity, the painstakingly drawn sketches of someone with one hell of a grin, of dancing and burning buildings to the ground and sitting on couch cushions in the middle of the floor like children but one of the last memories is a look you’ve gotten a thousand times: amusement, shaking head and saying your name because you’ve done or are about to do something dumb.

You don’t miss it when it’s gone, but for a while, you do feel something that someone who understood how to have feelings and talk about them in words would describe as sad. It leaves you confused, struggling and despite knowing in your bones what’s coming, how much it will hurt, you don’t want to feel that way.

The mission is all there is. Or it was, until you’re standing on a bridge in Washington D.C., bold as brass (why aren’t you hiding as usual?) ( _you’re not supposed to ask questions that are irrelevant_ ) and like a ton of bricks, something hits you.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

 

* * *

 

Your arm is the most valuable part of you. It is given maintenance, but you know something is wrong. You’re not in the mood to coddle people in white coats.

There’s something loose in your head. It’s like dropping something in a car, you can feel it somewhere down there but the likelihood of finding it without stopping and really figuring it out isn’t strong. The image just keeps playing itself over, like a filmstrip of a target and you--

You feel something.

You’ve had memories before. Not everything is obliterated, as some knowledge must be maintained. But there is an emotion, a feeling behind this that you can’t place. It’s not anger; your targets have thwarted you, which never happens and there’ll be pain for it but you do not feel anger, or fear. What you do feel is--

It’s something. It is something, but even then, you’re brought back to the present with pain. It’s not much, but you have to wonder if this is a test. This is something you’re meant to know. This is a word you’re meant to know. Something twists inside, and you realise that you did not ask ‘what’ a Bucky is but ‘who’. This is something you’re supposed to know and you’re convinced of that, and when that happens, it slides into place. Until you realise Bucky is a person, is something -- until the man on the bridge said -- the man --

_You know him._

You’ve been around a while and this isn’t out of the ordinary. You’ve seen people before, sometimes years apart. But you didn’t feel anything in response to that. You can feel something and you’re repeating it in your head, as it’s getting stronger. There’s something already trying to write it off, tell you that this is insane, that you’re faulty and you need maintenance and to be fixed and wiped and that this is dangerous, because suddenly what you feel has a name. _Recognition._ You recognise him, and you’re being lied to. It had never occurred before that your handlers might lie to you. You do not lie to a weapon if you want the blows precise. You give demand, mission and it is accomplished. That’s how this works, and you’re being lied to and -- you _know_ you’re being lied to. People lie for a variety of reasons, but they lie to themselves and to other people. Why you are being lied to is not an easy question, unless--

Panic and bile rise in your throat and you swallow hard, your heart is slamming into your chest and it’s confusing, and it’s wrong, and when you get close, it slips away. It’s frustrating. You know it’s important, and you’re clenching your jaw trying to remember and almost immediately, it dawns on you it’s a mistake. That you’re going to lose it again.

It’s probably for the best, though it’s hard to remember even that when it rips into you again.

 

* * *

 

When you are given missions, they come with information, background and what’s needed to complete the task. Scant information on a winged man, for instance, is given as a possible ally and thus, possible casualty of the mission. However, there is usually one underlying statement: one task that defines what you must do for your mission to be accomplished. Nothing must get in the way of this. You adjust rest, nourishment, clothes and weapons to accomplish this pivotal task. In this case, your task is to take the life of a man with a target on his back. It turns out to be a lot less simple than that.

People fight for their survival. This, he expects. He has a mission to complete too, and the fact that the helicarrier is crashing down seems to indicate his was a more successful one than yours. What is unexpected is the fact he goes out of his way to continue the fight, then stops fighting you. No, that isn’t quite true -- the words are like landmines and you can’t breathe, your chest hurts and if you have to die, you’re going to die completing your mission.

Then something echoes. Words, images, smell hit and his stomach bottoms out. Fear is not an emotion he’s truly accustomed to, but it’s spreading like wildfire and staying your hand. You’re completely paralyzed, struck harder than any blow because he won’t _shut up_ before something clicks. It’s not unlike getting a mission, except the voice inside is disturbingly familiar and wakes like a crack of a whip at the sight of your target falling. It’s rushed, panicked and adamant that you go in after him, that you pull him out and check he’s breathing.

As strong as any directive, stronger even as he’s already moving without a single thought, is the thought that you have to save him.

You don’t know where it came from, or what it means but you feel fear, blinding terror, for the first time in your living memory at the image of Steven Rogers falling to his death. You could rationalise it as checking the target dies, but you know he’ll die. He’s going to pass out and drown. You’re already in the water when these thoughts take you, grabbing the idiot that won’t fight back by scruff and pulling him out.

The more you stare, the more obvious it becomes: _You know him._ You definitely know him and it’s tearing something apart just staring at him. He breathes, and so do you. You didn’t realise you hadn’t been, but there are sounds -- sirens, they’re looking for him, he’s _important_ and apparently not just to you -- and they’ll find him. He will live, he is saved and -- the new objective is reached.

For a moment, you consider staying but a single thought of how he looked at you fills your stomach with dread. Like you’re important. Like you’re person he seems to believe you are. You almost want to stay and assure him he’s hit his head, he’s deluded, you are the soldier and you have never been anything else. This is just a glitch, something they’ll fix and you’ll go back to the ice and wait. Except you won’t. That voice, the one you took the last directive from, seems very adamant that it’s not a good idea. You cannot go back. Unstable weapons are terminated and thrown away. Except the voice says it a different way. It’s saying they will kill you or you will kill him if you go back.

Against protocol, against instinct and against any sanity, you make the decision to listen.

You're already walking away.


End file.
